Server Downtime - May 13th-16th, 2025

[vdeane]

Has the way the login works changed?  When I signed in earlier, the "stay signed in for 1 hour" thing oddly still had me signed in after an hour.

[kphoger]

So many 'Loading' hangups now.  Almost every time I go to quote a post, it fails to populate the quoted text and just throws a 'Loading' banner at the top of the screen instead.  Refreshing the page and trying again works sometimes, but other times it takes several attempts and few mild profanities.

This issue has gone away lately.  I'm not seeing it anymore.

[kphoger]

Has the way the login works changed?  When I signed in earlier, the "stay signed in for 1 hour" thing oddly still had me signed in after an hour.

All I've noticed is that either the default changed, or else the list itself changed.  I only know this because I try to use the keyboard instead of the mouse as much as possible, and I used to select 'Forever' by simply hitting Tab Up-arrow Tab Enter or something like that (my fingers know, not my brain).  I did that earlier, apparently that now means '1 hour', and then I wondered by I got booted out a little while later.

[Rothman]

Just experienced a hang-up loading a thread.

[rickmastfan67]

Has the way the login works changed?  When I signed in earlier, the "stay signed in for 1 hour" thing oddly still had me signed in after an hour.

I tweaked that setting to 1 day now by default.

[Alex]

UPDATE: my host says all the requests are coming from a single ip, 166.194.200.53, which is an ATT/Cingular ip in Allen, Texas. Is that consistent with the attack source on AARoads, or is my situation separate and unrelated?

I downloaded log files from May 13 to May 16 and the ip 166.194.200.53 did not show up.
However as an example, three IP's from Brazil showed up 1,530 times on May 13.

Similar to you, long term traffic overall for AARoads has decreased or been flat, so this surge in bot traffic has been surprising. And the number of bots remains at ridiculously high levels: 5,800 guests and 13 users as of this post.

Just experienced a hang-up loading a thread.

Checking the memory usage, the trend has been that the server tops out after 6 PM nightly. Which helps explain why the Forum may spool or hang-up.

I have the cron job restarting the server daily at 2 AM. May have to consider adding a second restart to offset the memory usage until this bot activity decreases (if it ever does).

Alex:  Do you ever feel like you're playing Whack-A-Mole with a Band-Aid?

Absolutely! When I think I have things covered, I turn around and the SMF error log is populated with something new.

[Rothman]

All things considered, seems to be running pretty smoothly now, despite the surprising Russsian spam account showing up.

[1995hoo]

All things considered, seems to be running pretty smoothly now, despite the surprising Russsian spam account showing up.

As the guy who services our HVAC always writes on the post-service ticket, "System operates properly at this time."

[Henry]

It's good to be back!

[kphoger]

I did get another instance of [Loading] yesterday, but only for a few minutes.

[davewiecking]

Screwy calendar? In the Unread Posts listing, the post about widening I-30 in Texarkana area showed last updated today 5:55 am (roughly). The actual post has that time, but May 2 as the date...
Just pointing it out. Very appreciative of the efforts to keep this forum alive!

[LilianaUwU]

The forum crashed again earlier. I only noticed it was back because I'm awake at degen hours.

[ZLoth]

Both the forum and the main page crashed yesterday, and came back online at 1:00 AM Central.

I'm keeping a uptime kuma monitor active at my end.

[Alex]

The forum crashed again earlier. I only noticed it was back because I'm awake at degen hours.

Both the forum and the main page crashed yesterday, and came back online at 1:00 AM Central.

I'm keeping a uptime kuma monitor active at my end.

I see where it went down. The memory did not tap out this time, so I looked at some of other analytics:



Can anyone offer suggestions? Problems seem to arise daily around 5 to 6 PM EDT. I am leaning toward having the server restart also during evenings.

While doing data entry on the main site the last two afternoons, I encountered timeouts on scripts, and ultimately chose to restart the server. Fortunately this process does not take too long, and it resolves the timeout or 500 errors I get.

Looking at the latest stats, as of this moment there are 1,188 guests. So the Forum continues to draw in bots. The slow logs yesterday revealed numerous Forum interactions too, no doubt related to so many GET requests.

[vdeane]

Can anyone offer suggestions? Problems seem to arise daily around 5 to 6 PM EDT. I am leaning toward having the server restart also during evenings.

An evening restart sounds like a good idea to me, at least until a decision can be made on the effectiveness of the wiki's blocking method.

[gonealookin]

At the moment, 8,624 guests and 23 users are on the forum.

I wonder if it would make any difference to require that users be logged in to view the substance of the forum.  You might leave one publicly-viewable subforum under Meta visible to everyone ("About This Forum" or whatever; a description of the forum contents, explanation of how to register, and locked to all posts).  As to all of the subforums, the SMF setting would be changed to the same as several current ones such as "Fictional" and "Travel" that are not visible unless the reader is a logged-in member.

[hotdogPi]

It's already been tried. Making the forum only visible to people who are logged in doesn't decrease the number of bots.